Chess records page

Chess records page (no, not on the first page, or the second page, or the third page, of a google search of *chess records*).

There’s lots of good stuff here, enough to fill much of a book if you so desire. As we’ve discussed, chess games are in the public domain so if you take material on chess games from an existing book or website without crediting the person who compiled this material, you’re not actually plagiarizing.

9 Comments

I don’t know that I like the assumption that the artificial construct of intellectual property, and the somewhat more natural construct of not passing off someone else’s work as your own are inextricably intertwined.

Also you should totally check out this amazing game that my friend Iman Lasker played against me back in high-school when I used to wear a white mexican wrestling mask and play under the nom-de-game Joe Capablanca. We were both about 13 at the time and really didn’t know what we were doing but had a good time anyway

My grandfather lost to the U.S. champion once. Not in a tournament, it was in a coffeehouse. But still. Anyway, I was telling this story to my friend Smiley—the chess master, magician, and master musician—who immediately replied, Oh, was it Marshall? I replied that, yes, Marshall was the U.S. champion who beat my grandfather. Smiley said, Oh, Marshall was no good.

Ethics aside, this is interesting stuff. I was surprised to learn that one of the games with most Queens (not one of the hoax games, but an actual tournament game between Szalanczy and Nguyen in Budapest in 2009, which for seven full moves had six Queens simultaneously on the board) ended in a draw. Then I found that it was possible to view this game in the chessviewer “Olga”: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1699399

The 3 castlings is probably because this rules violation wasn’t noticed during the game. This would be similar to getting four outs in a baseball inning because neither the umpire nor the other team was paying enough attention.

On a related subject, the official FIDE rules of chess once specified that castling can occur as long as neither the king nor rook has moved from its original square and the king is not in check and would not pass through a square threatened by an opposing piece. “The king is transferred from its original square, two squares toward the rook; then that rook toward which the king has moved is transferred over the king to the square immediately adjacent to the king.” So, according to the rules, you could promote a pawn to a rook on e8 and then castle with it! Krabbé once composed a chess problem to exploit that quirk of the rules. FIDE changed the rules. But it appears nobody had ever actually done it in a game.

Tim Krabbé is a remarkable guy. He wrote some good books, including “The Rider”, which is one of my favorite books…certainly in my top 30, anyway. He was a very good amateur bike racer. And he’s a very good chess player and problemist. Basically he is better than me at everything he and I have both tried to do, and I have no reason to doubt that if I tried to do more things that he does, or vice versa, that statement would remain true.